Courses

2011 Telling a Good Yarn

Everybody loves a good yarn, and publishers love strong stories, but how do you make yours as good as it can be? Where is the kindling, the match and the wood to set the forest ablaze? If you’d like some inspiration, some tools, some tricks and some firelighters, this course will give you what you need to turn a spark of a story into an all-consuming tale. .....

2011 Unleash Your Creativity and Discover the Genius Writer Within!

Are you an expert procrastinator? Does writing ever feel like a painful, plodding process? Do you easily slide into overwhelm and critical paralysis, even to the extent of not letting yourself write? Do you ever feel blocked and afraid that nothing you write will be good enough or that you might not have what it takes… .....

2011 Write a Page Turner

Learn the five essential elements of compelling fiction with the bestselling author of The Olive Sisters and Two for the Road (Penguin). In this hands-on workshop you will discover the key storytelling techniques that can help you create that ‘unputdownable’ story in any genre. We’ll explore ‘situations’ in the context of character, the crafting of dialogue, the purpose of conflict, the role of structure and the art of creating suspense. .....

2011 Character Flaws (SOLD OUT)

‘Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.’ (Abraham Lincoln)

‘Who is more real? Homer or Ulysses? Shakespeare or Hamlet? Burroughs or Tarzan’ (Robert A. Heinlein)

Strong characters are essential to effective creative writing — and if your characters are strong enough, they will do your writing for you (while you relax and have a cup of tea). In this one-day course, best-selling author Jaclyn Moriarty (Feeling Sorry for Celia, Dreaming of Amelia) will discuss and help you practise techniques for creating characters that leap from the page. .....

2011 We're Talking Dialogue

Many good novels are let down by weak or mundane dialogue. Plays rely heavily on dialogue and film dialogue has its own unique requirements. Gary Baxter is an internationally recognised playwright, novelist, actor and director. In this course he will investigate how dialogue defines and creates character in novels, stage plays and screenplays. .....

2011 Manuscript Polishing Kit

Do you have a manuscript that you want to submit to a publisher? Need some help with that final layer of polish?

In this course editor Sharon Rundle will help fiction writers looking to polish their manuscripts for submission to publishers. This course is specifically for narratives that have already been developed and are near to publication stage. .....

2012 Year of the Novel: Act Two

Act Two is where our action happens. Where we make form out substance, drawing together the ideas, possibilities and words we’ve created throughout the first stage of this course. We’ll explore many techniques that can turn a story inside out and back-to-front, and we’ll start to think about structuring ideas and events in a way that is meaningful to an overall narrative. .....

2012 Writing Comedy Beyond a Joke

In this course for writers, Dom Knight will share his experiences in diverse areas of comedy writing, like how to come up with ideas, how to tell whether something’s funny, how to use comedy to make a serious point and how to work humour into whatever else you may be writing. During the workshop, you’ll brainstorm jokes and comedy ideas in areas from one-liners to sketches to narrative comedy. .....

2012 Taking the Mystery out of History: Writing Historical Fiction

SOLD OUT!

Whether you are thinking about writing a historical novel, or have made a start, stalled, and need help to get going, this workshop is for you.

A historical novel is the passport to a bygone world, but for the passport to be valid, the book must be authentic, believable, and evocative. In this lively workshop, award-winning author Diane Armstrong will discuss ways of bringing your historical fiction to life. .....

2012 Stuck! Therapy for Writer's Block

Writers can get stuck at a number of stages in a project: stuck at the beginning when uncertainty about how to get going, where to start, whether the idea is good enough, or how to do justice to the research creates paralysis; stuck in the middle when the work grinds to a halt, maybe because the energy and passion have gone out of the writing, or maybe because of an unresolved problem earlier in the draft, or possibly because the idea which seemed so good at its beginning just doesn’t seem to have a satisfactory ending; or stuck at the end when fear of allowing someone else to read the work can send the writer back to yet another edit or rewrite. This workshop will cover a number of techniques for overcoming blocks at all of these stages, exploring mind games, check lists as well as physical exercises. The workshop aims to give writers a toolbox containing a range of potential lubricants to ease a writer’s block. .....

2012 Navigating Through a Writing Project

Having problems kickstarting ideas? Have trouble sticking with a creative problem? Then struggle with finishing a project? “Navigating Through a Writing Project” looks to give helpful hints to get through all stages of the creative process. .....

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